Star Wars Celebration 2013: the Force is still strong

Every two years, thousands of Star Wars fans gather to meet their idols, show
off their handiwork, and commiserate about spouses who don’t understand
their obsession. Will Storr travels to Essen, Germany, for Star Wars
Celebration 2013.

A Star Wars superfan, dressed as a Stormtrooper, takes a cigarette break at Star Wars CelebrationPhoto: Will Storr

It’s him. In the middle of the room, black cloak, black gloves, black boots, black helmet. Evil itself has arrived from a galaxy far, far away. He looms at the back of a small conference room in the vividly unremarkable town of Essen, near Düsseldorf. He is here. And everyone is ignoring him. Unfortunately for Darth Vader, he finds himself in the company of journalists. We're all here, at the 2013 Star Wars Celebration, having travelled from as far away as Russia, Japan, Australia and London, to find out about one thing, and one thing only: the new film.

It’s hoped that Star Wars Episode VII, which should see release in 2015, might right the wrongs of the interminable prequels, whose earnest and complex plots, CGI, and Ewan McGregor caused such rage and disappointment among fans. Indeed, for a while, things looked hopeful. Disney’s $4 billion acquisition of George Lucas’s film preceded the thrilling news, in January, that gifted director J J Abrams had been hired. But, just yesterday, rumours broke that Abrams might be leaving the project. Bloggers quoted “multiple sources” saying that he’s threatened to quit. A Disney spokesperson has said, “There’s no truth to the rumour.” Which is exactly what they’d say if he was going to leave. And also, if he wasn’t. So what’s the truth?

A tense silence falls as a grinning Disney employee takes the stage. “Truly the biggest Star Wars party in the galaxy is happening in Germany this weekend!” he announces, his full-beam Disney sheen a-glinting. “But before I bring out the special guests, I want to do a bit of housekeeping. This is a very, very exciting time in Star Wars, as we know. Everything that’s going to be coming down in the future, we know about. Unfortunately – and this is the unsavoury bit – we can’t ask or take any questions about that, at this time. Now! On with the show!”

Even Darth Vader looks disappointed. But still, the 30th-anniversary partial reunion of the Return of the Jedi cast should make up for it. We all sit back as the actors who played Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Boba Fett, C3PO, Emperor Palpatine and Chewbacca enter, and take a series of obedient questions. One reporter asks Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew) what it is he gets out of going to all these appearances. “A pension,” he says, slightly glumly. Indeed, he soon reveals just how much work events such as this one provide. Sitting next to Boba Fett (Jeremy Bulloch), he says, “We’ve travelled so far it’s unbelievable. I know Jeremy will confirm this. I’ve got a million air miles, and that takes a lot of doing.” “I’ve got 500 miles on my card,” say Boba Fett, somewhat crestfallen.

When asked about the fate of an unmade film called “Chewy”, Chewbacca raises his chin like a scandalised aunt. “Noooo comment,” he says. “I know nothing about it. The last I heard they were waiting for finance.” “Can’t you use your air miles to help them?” mutters Fett.

The Celebration proper begins the next morning. Over the coming three days, 20,000 fans will stream into the Messe Essen to have their photos taken in fan-built sets, to parade in DIY costumes, to display their huge, hand-crafted models of TIE Fighters or AT-AT walkers, to attend workshops and talks and have trinkets signed by the stars. In the shop, you can buy a Return of the Jedi necklace for €27, a basket of Ewoks for €50 and a Vader Castle beer stein for €63. At the Lego stand, a box full of plastic Death Star bits will cost you €419.99. There are even tattoo artists. In the cafeteria, two sweatily de-helmeted Stormtroopers share a Coke Zero, while George Lucas (not the real one) shovels escalope and spuds into his sprayed-grey bearded mouth. In a rare quiet spot, a plump thirtysomething is on his knees, examining the plastic package that a newly bought Return of the Jedi figure has come in. He twists and turns it under the light, one eye half shut, searching for tiny flaws in his precious purchase.

Similar Celebrations have been held around the world since 1999. We are thrown a few fan-pleasing morsels of information about the new films – John Williams will again provide the music, the effects won’t be entirely computer-generated – but the weekend is chiefly a starburst of fantasy, fun and not-quite pathological obsession; of glued-together helmets and guns made of pipe. Touchingly, it’s common to see two generations of one family all costumed up, parents and toddlers united in the orange outfit of the rebel fighter pilots. It’s a curious thing, the power that these films continue to hold.

However, when asked what it was that made the original trilogy such a cultural force, the answers the actors give are illuminating in the fact they clearly have no idea. “I dunno,” shrugs Chewy. “It’s just something special.” Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) isn’t much more erudite, offering, “Er, it’s just a terrific story.” I decide to pick up the mystery and see if the fans have any better ideas.

Avid collector Shane Turgeon (WILL STORR)

Martin Hunt first watched Return of the Jedi when he was six. Today, he’s 33, and a world expert in Star Wars origami. He’s here presenting his papery icons, which include an R2D2, a speeder bike, a Vulture Droid (no idea) and the Millennium Falcon. His X-Wing Fighter, he tells me, took four years to perfect.

“I wouldn’t say I’m a superfan,” he says, standing right in front of me, dressed entirely as Obi-Wan Kenobi. He doesn’t agree with Emperor Palpatine’s “Terrific Story Theory”. “If you look at the plots and the dialogue they’re nothing special,” he says. “I think it’s the iconic imagery.” I wonder which character he most relates to.

“Well, look who I’m dressed as,” Hunt says. “If anyone in the Star Wars universe was to fold paper it would be Obi-Wan. Sat in the desert, no one around. He has the time, he has the discipline.” “But no paper,” I observe.

“No,” he says, adding hopefully, “I’m sure he could find something.” I find another Obi-Wan fan on a lower floor. Actually the word “fan” doesn’t do Steve Sansweet justice. He’s the fan, a man whose collection grew so huge that he now runs it as a museum in north San Francisco. If you want to peruse his 300,000 exhibits in the 9,000sq ft (non profit, he insists) Rancho Obi-Wan, you’re required to attend the guided tour, which can last up to three hours and costs $200 per head. “I have a collecting gene,” he says.

Martin Hunt with his origami R2D2 (WILL STORR)

Sansweet believes that it was the “merchandise that helped make Star Wars a worldwide phenomenon”. He first saw Star Wars: A New Hope aged 31, two weeks before its official opening, in a back lot at 20th Century Fox. He was a reporter for the Wall Street Journal at the time. “There was no buzz whatsoever in the media,” he recalls. “George thought his career was over. He thought, 'I’ve probably made a true bomb of a movie.’ He was eating dinner with his wife, Marsha, across from the Chinese Theatre, and he sees this line of fans.

“He’d forgotten that his own movie was opening that day and he said, 'I want to see what all these people are going to.’ He goes out and, in his words, says, 'Holy moly! It’s Star Wars!’” I ask him about Lucas’s writing process. It’s well known, among fans, that he was interested in the theories of myth proposed by academic Joseph Campbell in his book The Hero’s Journey. Others claim Lucas based his story on parables from Christianity, Buddhism and Taoism. “I think all of that was underlying what he was doing,” says Sansweet, who’s interviewed Lucas. A bigger influence, he says, were the themes of good and evil that were being played out in the news. “This was the era of Richard Nixon and the Vietnam War. The Imperials were South Vietnamese and the Americans, and the rebels were the Vietcong. The low tech was overcoming the high tech.”

Back upstairs, a talk is beginning on the difficulties that being a Star Wars collector might present when adult crises happen. “A few years ago, my life went in a direction I didn’t expect it to,” says 35-year-old Shane Turgeon. “I was married, I'm now divorced. I quit my career to open a business and had some very interesting things happen with partners. It’s been very difficult.” He talks through a number of critical life events, and how they might impact on the collector. The “relationships – cons” slide includes the points, “Unsupportive partners may limit collecting habits” and “May have to give up display space”. For those that do find themselves in a loving relationship, they recommend honesty.

“Everyone in this room probably knows someone who has been dishonest with their partner about their collecting,” says Turgeon. “There have been stories where people have got into so much financial trouble that they hid from their wife or husband that they got divorced.”

But, on the bright side, their “divorce – pros” slide notes the newly single can find “Emotional release and freedom”, as well as “More display space”.

Fans jostle over Star Wars memorabilia (WILL STORR)

After the talk, Turgeon tells me that everything in his life was great. “And then my life s--- itself.” In strife, Star Wars was his succour. “It’s such an escape,” he says. “When life is bad, you put on Star Wars and just forget about things for a while.” To get him through his darkest times, Turgeon thought of Yoda. “He’d always been my favourite character, but is now more than ever. He’s very Zen-like.”

In particular, he’d focus on Yoda’s famous lesson, “do or do not – there is no try”. “It’s just the wisest phrase,” he says. “We don’t have the luxury of being able to give up. No matter how hard it is, you still have to get out of bed.”

Later, I speak with a man who would doubtless agree. 29-year-old Robert Cunningham from Phoenix, Arizona, is famed in the community for being the member of the “Save the Lars Homestead” project who travelled to the Tunisian desert in 2010 to preserve a part of the Star Wars set. His most sacred character is the lesser-known Rebel pilot Wedge Antilles.

“I always wanted to be in the US Military,” he explains, “and I never got in due to health reasons.” When his friends went to Afghanistan, Cunningham would remember how Antilles was locked in a prison cell, forbidden from going into battle – and how be broke out of it, and fought all the same, because he knew to do so was right. “I felt trapped in the prison of being stuck at home when there was a good fight to be fought.”

So, just like his hero, he broke out, getting embedded with the military as a photojournalist. “I found myself going into combat without a gun. When we’d go through a firefight, I had a Jedi patch on my armour.” As useful as the spirit of Antilles was for him during action, it was even more so afterwards. “I lost friends. I had nightmares. I had a dear friend come home and he killed himself. I’d look at a character like Luke Skywalker, who comes home and finds his only family burned. Everything was taken from him. Yet he has to continue and, in the end, he triumphs.”

To Cunningham, Star Wars is about human struggle. “It’s the struggle we all face. We all have our own internal battles. We all have demons that try to hold us back and we have to overcome them. In Star Wars, it’s the same story. Our problems may not be on a galaxy-wide scale, but to us they are important.” He’s right, of course. Fans such as him use the Star Wars tales like Christians use Biblical parables – for inspiration, guidance and hope.

Perhaps Emperor Palpatine’s theory was true after all. It’s just a terrific story.